Ramona man's owl boxes take flight

In 1992 certified arborist Tom Stephan was giving a woman an estimate on trimming a sycamore tree at her Pauma Valley Country Club home when he noticed a box in the branches.

She was hoping it would attract owls to kill rodents, she said, but it hadn’t worked.

Stephen, a falconer since high school, told her the box was too low and moved it higher.

Three days later, an owl had taken up residence. When the woman hosted her friends that week to play bridge, they asked where they could get owl boxes. She called Stephan, and he agreed to make them. He sold nine that week alone.

Tom Stephan gets a birds’-eye-view of an owl box he installed in Ramona. The top-of-the-line boxes can include a closed-circuit camera. — John Gastaldo

What’s up with Molly and McGee?

The barn owls, who became Internet celebrities and the subject of three books, still live in their box at Carlos and Donna Royal’s home in San Marcos.

Tom Stephan installed the box in February 2008, and the owls made it their home in January 2010. With the help of his grandson, Carlos broadcast video of the pair’s first clutch on the Internet, and the response was huge. At the height of the viewing, the show had as many as 20 million unique viewers watching the eggs hatch, the parents caring for their little ones and the young owls taking flight. Since then, the couple has had two more clutches. A total of 10 owls have fledged. Now Molly and McGee are empty nesters, so to speak, and Carlos has turned off the camera. But if they have another clutch, the show will resume, he said.

Adrian Vore • U-T

Since then, he’s put up 30,000 barn owl boxes in Southern California.

“Maybe you have a rodent problem and you don’t like poisons,” said Stephan, 58, of Ramona. “And you don’t want to use traps because you don’t want to handle yucky rodents. There used to be no alternatives; now there is.”

He no longer makes the boxes himself. Now he contracts with a local craftsman. Instead, he visits each property personally and assesses the best place to install the box, which typically tops a 15-foot pole. While he recommends a minimum half-acre lot for an owl box, he said a “normal backyard” works fine as well.

“Because my boxes are self-cleaning and there’s no maintenance, the only problem someone might have in closer areas is a little noise during fledging (when young birds leave the nest),” Stephan said.

Even though most clients initially want a box to help with pest control — an owl pair can kill up to 2,000 rodents per year, according to the California Department of Fish and Game — it is the birds’ nesting habits that intrigue them.

Most notably, Stephan installed the box that attracted Molly and her partner McGee, owls who became international superstars through San Marcos resident Carlos Royal’s blog accounts and live Internet video feed.

“The boxes are a real conversation piece for most people. They become owl-a-holics,” Stephan said.

Michael Mace, curator of birds at the San Diego Zoo, applauds the owl box phenomenon.

“Barn owls are one of those species that have been able to adapt to human activities,” he said. “As Southern California has built out, if you didn’t have artificial nesting sites like this, these owls would have to move into a habitat not suited for them. You wouldn’t have owls keeping the rodent population in check.”

Stephan is one of a handful of owl box sellers in California, although he says his line of four boxes — the $1,250 top model includes a closed-circuit camera such as Royal’s for monitoring via TV or computer — are unique. The design encourages the owl to clean the box regularly, and Stephan developed an oil coating that helps keep bees away from the box, a common problem with birdhouses.

Sue Burkett had Stephan install a box with video feed five years ago at her Rancho Bernardo home, where a pine sheltered it. She was disappointed when two years later an owl still hadn’t taken up residence (Stephan says owls will occupy the boxes anywhere from a day to a few years after installation). Then a heavy rainstorm caused the tree to fall, leaving the box standing on its pole in open air. Within days an owl had found the box and laid eggs in it.

“It was just marvelous to watch them playing in the box and mama taking care of them,” Burkett said. “I planted tomatoes this year and didn’t even have a gopher (in the garden). So (the owls have) really accomplished what they’re supposed to do.”